Friday, November 1, 2013

Do Muslim Women Need Saving?

Time Magazine A moral crusade to rescue oppressed Muslim women from their cultures
and their religion has swept the public sphere, dissolving distinctions
between conservatives and liberals, sexists and feminists. The crusade
has justified all manner of intervention from the legal to the military,
the humanitarian to the sartorial. But it has also reduced Muslim women
to a stereotyped singularity, plastering a handy cultural icon over
much more complicated historical and political dynamics.

As an anthropologist who has spent decades doing research on and with
women in different communities in the Middle East, I have found myself
increasingly troubled by our obsession with Muslim women. Ever since
2001, when defending the rights of Muslim women was offered as a
rationale for military intervention in Afghanistan, I have been trying
to reconcile what I know from experience about individual women’s lives,
and what I know as a student of the history of women and of feminism in
different parts of the Muslim world, with the stock images of Muslim
women that bombard us here in the West. Over the past decade, from the
girls and women like Nujood Ali, whose best-selling memoir I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorcedwas co-written,
like so many of the others, by a Western journalist, to Malala
Yousafzai, they have been portrayed as victims of the veil, forced
marriage, honor crimes or violent abuse. They are presented as having a
deficit of rights because of Islam. But they don’t always behave the way
we expect them to, nor should they.

Take the veil, for example. We were surprised when many women in
Afghanistan didn’t take them off after being “liberated,” seeing as they
had become such symbols of oppression in the West. But we were
confusing veiling with a lack of agency. What most of us didn’t know is
that 30 years ago the anthropologist Hanna Papanek described the burqa
as “portable seclusion” and noted that many women saw it as a liberating
invention because it enabled them to move out of segregated living
spaces while still observing the requirements of separating and
protecting women from unrelated men. People all over the globe,
including Americans, wear the appropriate form of dress for their
socially shared standards, religious beliefs and moral ideals. If we
think that U.S. women live in a world of choice regarding clothing, we
need to look no further than our own codes of dress and the often
constricting tyrannies of fashion.

As for Malala, she was subjected to horrible violence by the Taliban,
but education for girls and Islam are not at odds, as was suggested
when atheist Sam Harris praised
Malala for standing up to the “misogyny of traditional Islam.” Across
the Muslim world girls have even been going to state schools for
generations. In Pakistan, poverty and political instability undermine
girls’ schooling, but also that of boys. Yet in urban areas, girls
finish high school at rates close to those of young men, and they are
only fractionally less likely to pursue higher education. In many Arab
countries, and in Iran, more women are in university than men. In Egypt,
women make up a bigger percentage of engineering and medical faculties
than women do in the U.S. [...]

That's funny, 10 years ago a bill was struck down in the province of Ontario that would have incorporated the usage of Sharia for matters of marriage, divorce and custody disputes through the Ontario Private Arbitration Act. This article of provincial law is the mechanism in which batei dinim are able to function (provided both parties sign an agreement to use them). The bill was scrapped after it came under heavy opposition (mainly by Muslim women).

I mean geeezzzz!!! Wonder what got those broads so worked up?! They should probably Time Magazine more often for a more balanced perspective on life. Especially if the article is written by a professor from that bastion social academic sanity called Columbia University . The professor was kind enough to point out that while western society is polarized, Islamic society is nuanced. Someone pass me a joint so I can contemplate that profound insight.

As an American Muslim woman who converted 25 yrs ago all I can say is thanks but no thanks. I do not need to be liberated.I fail to understand why covering my hair and yes the rest of my body ( we call it modesty), although I do not wear niqab, cause such concern from people. I am not forced to cover, I am a widow so nope my husband does not force me and would not have done so when alive.Yes things done in the name of religion-any religion- can be and have been horrifying but the realization that the majority of people do not act in such a manner should be a clear indication that for most Muslims we just lead a very normal and average life.

August 8, 2017 10:30 pm yeshiva world Since the implementation of the Rav Kav transportation smart card in Israel, the Knesset’s Ombud...

Rav Zev Leff recommends my 3 books on Child & Domestic Abuse

Click on picture to hear excerpt from Jan. 2012 Kav L'Noar conference. "I want to first give hakoras hatov to Dr. Baruch Shulem who provided me with Daniel Eidensohn's books on child abuse and domestic abuse which offered me many many sources and it gave me many many ideas to be able to deal with the subject properly. And I thank them and I recommend those books to everyone who is interested in getting a good foundation what the issues are in this very important topic."